[Mission feedback] Fuel Utopia

[Black Mamba]

Issues noted:
- Need to give the raders a really different outfit to limit the blue-on-blue incidents
- try and make the civies blufor in the slotting screen (so that the host knows who's slotted and who's not)

Other than that, what was worrying me was the framerate, and everybody reported a decent one, so that's good.

Please post your impressions, ideas, suggestions, bug reports.

[Cuddlefish]

Beyond the friendly fire clusterfuntimes; the main thing that seemed to get in the mission's way was the size and density of the town compared to the number of people on each team killing the momentum and leading to some pretty severe 'camp or wander' syndrome. I'm not sure whether you'd want to shrink the town, spread the structures out a bit, only run the mission with larger player counts, or perhaps take a combination of those methods to try and keep things moving. Having the pump objective be more obvious (IE: able to be picked out by a spotter in the Mi-8 flying near the town) might also help get people moving to the same places and get good shootouts happening. I had no frame-rate issues, but my system is a bit of an outlier based on the performance reports I've heard from others re: certain missions or things like Blastcore, so I'd wait for further confirmation from the others.

[fer]

Comrade Black Mamba - is it possible to use the number of players on the CIV side to drive the size of the generated town? The other tweak I would suggest considering is dropping pistols as a primary weapon for defenders; I had an M1911 or similar, but would have gladly traded it for an MP5 with even 2 mags - there's something very unwieldly about moving with a pistol in ArmA2.

The sound effect you used (the wind) was lovely, btw. Very atmospheric mission; looking forward to this becoming part of the main rotation, comrade!

[Black Mamba]

Regarding the adjustable size of the town, I'll look into it. That should be doable.
As to the finding the fuel tank issues, I do believe both sides have a click action in the map screen that indicates it. Anyway, that's the only thing in that mission that is not random: the fuel tanks is always exactly at the same place: the middle of the village. The ways to get to it, however, will be different every playthrough. This is where the helicopter plays its role: provide the attackers with a way to observe the village from above and drive the ground troops towards it.
In my idea, then, most of the fighting would happen around the fuel truck and it's armed escort (thus avoiding the observed scattering all over the place), while higher playcounts might alloiw for some sneaky flanking maneuvers and other craftiness. Maybe, then, a timer forcing the raiders to move towards the objective instead of trying to kill everybody first might also help. What do y'all think?

Regarding the weapons: As a defender, the weapon you get is random. The number of mags with it too, but it can't be under two. This to simulate the fact that the civies did gather, really, what weapons they could. This being a socialist Utopia, there are no privileges. You get what you're issued! I could drop out the handguns, though, cause the arma clunkyness does increase by a zillion times factor when walking around with a pistol, I'll give you that.
The raiders, on the other hand, being specialized warriors, get a "standard" loadout.

[lazerdx]

I should check this subforum more often!

A lot can be said for my plan. We should have observed the town with the helicopter and figured out where we were going, since the quarters were so tight. Judging the route with your eyes on the ground is something of a challenge. Having the size adjust would be awesome! It'd really focus the action. It was a little intimidating to move forward into that with just 14 guys with and bearing. I tried to encourage my comrades with bullets but it just wound up killing them.

EDIT: Now that I think about it driving the truck in with two fireteams in escort is the way to go. If an additional fireteam is available they could provide visuals from one of the two hills N and S. The crux of the issue really is figuring out exactly HOW you go about escorting that truck through those tight alleys, as it's going to be slow and vulnerable.

Me being killed early on and losing coordination probably didn't help.

[Cuddlefish]

It was a shame we didn't get to try out the technical thunder-run discussed as an option in the planning phase. Effective or not, that would have been *amazing*. Actually, on that tangent, do we have missions with large scale use of player technicals / fast attack vehicles? That would be pretty cool IMO, and would probably lead to party approved casualty figures in a timely fashion.

[Black Mamba]

You'll hopefully have other occasions to try that. Actually, when I first designed this mission (and it was waaaay back, I believe it was the second mission I started making for Folk, after Blackfolk Down), the raiders would attack a civilian in the middle of the desert. I had quite the lot of ideas, revolving around some Mad Max-esque stuff, but never got to implement them well enough.

As comrade Wolfenswan said earlier today, there's plenty of room for more mission makers in the community, and if you have ideas, please try and make something out of them! There will be trial and error and frustration, but it's something I really enjoy doing, and you will get all the help needed around here.